by Jerry Hart
“Who are you?” a voice asked from behind him.
Chris spun around to see a young brunette standing at the front door. She was around the same age as him, holding a set of keys in one hand and a bottle of tea in the other.
“I’m a friend of Stephanie’s. I need you to call an ambulance. Stephanie’s in the tub; she was attacked,” Chris explained. The look of absolute shock and fear creeped onto the girl’s face. She stood frozen in place.
“What’s your name?” Chris asked her.
“Becky.”
“Okay, Becky, I’m guessing you’re Stephanie’s best friend. I need you to call an ambulance now. I have to go after the person who did this. She was just here. If I were you, I’d lock myself in the bathroom with Stephanie while calling for help. Okay?”
Becky nodded. She reached into her purse, pulled out a cell phone and began dialing 911. She cautiously made her way past Chris and looked into the bathroom. She gasped, looked back at Chris, and then back into the bathroom. She closed the door and locked it.
Chris ran out the front door, which was still open, and quickly made his way to his car. He threw the door open and saw his cell phone in the passenger seat; it was flashing. It was his voicemail, but he didn’t have time to listen to it. He called Owen, who answered immediately.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Owen to explain to Chris the news report about the discovery of Eric’s body—the real Eric. Daniel and Alyssa were with Owen back at HQ. Chris was too afraid of leading the double back there, so he drove around aimlessly, talking to the others on his phone. A game plan was in order on how to tackle this situation.
“I guess this explains why bodies stopped showing up as frequently as they used to,” Owen said. “Once these things realized they could change shape, they started hiding their victims better. Maybe even started living their lives. How creepy is that?”
“How’s Stephanie?” Alyssa asked Chris.
“She’s … she’s in a coma,” he said, his voice sounding choked. “I overheard the doctors at the hospital.”
Chris had followed the ambulance, choosing to stay away from the cops who showed up because he didn’t want to answer any questions. With him and his friends choosing to take on evil themselves, they avoided the police whenever they could. After the tree house incident last night, he wouldn’t have put it past the cops to think it too coincidental that Chris just happened to be at the sight of two strange vampiric attacks.
He was then able to sneak close enough to Stephanie’s hospital room to hear her doctor’s diagnosis: Her brain functions had ceased due to a high level of toxin that ran through her bloodstream.
A result of the bite, no less. A toxin that was originally undetected when she was first brought to the hospital. Which meant the same thing would probably happen to Chris.
“What are we going to do?” Daniel asked, his voice sounding a little warbled and faint.
He probably had a little too much to drink, Chris thought. “I don’t know. I can’t come back unless I know I’m not being followed.”
“Hold on,” Alyssa said. “I just got a text message from David. He just said Eric is headed for downtown, that he’s coming for us.”
Chris noticed the tension in her voice, but there was no way for Eric—or the double or whatever it was—to know exactly where they were located. Their best bet was to stay put. He told the others this, but they didn’t like it.
“We should just take him out now while we can,” Owen said. “Let me do it. I beat him last time.”
“Quit being such a gangster,” Alyssa chimed in. “I agree with Chris on this. We should stay—”
“Are you serious?” Owen interrupted. “Is that what we’re going to do from now on—hide when things get tough? Is that why we started this group in the first place? If it is, let me know so I can quit. It’s just one monster!”
The thought of Stephanie lying in the bathtub sprang to Chris’s mind. He and the others had started their monster-hunting group to keep things like that from happening, to keep innocent people from getting hurt. They had to deal with this threat, and they had to do it as soon as possible before someone else suffered.
“I changed my mind,” Chris began. “I think we should take this thing out now while the getting’s good.”
“I’m on it,” he heard Owen say.
“No. We do this together,” Daniel said, sounding a little groggier.
They all agreed to take Eric out for good, that very night. In all the excitement of the past few minutes, no one had questioned how David knew of Eric’s whereabouts.
* * *
The double posing as Stephanie Polansky set down David’s phone that Michael had handed to her. She had to resort to text messaging because David, who was still in the garage, had bled completely; the impostor couldn’t assume his identity now.
Of course, Michael blamed her for letting Chris escape without first getting the location of his headquarters. All she had told Michael was it was located downtown somewhere, and though she had some of Chris’s memories, she could not discern the location from them. She also pointed out to Michael that Chris’s mind was extremely disciplined—the most disciplined she’d ever encountered—and that Michael’s little mind-reading trick probably wouldn’t work on him.
So they had to come up with a new plan: Draw the monster hunters out. The impostor had texted Alyssa, acting as David (Michael had told her of David’s love for texting), to tell her she’d gotten wind of Eric’s whereabouts—Moby’s Diner on University Drive.
“That should do it,” she said to Michael. “I still don’t get why we couldn’t just get them to come here.”
“The police are on their way,” said Michael.
“How do you know?”
Michael only smiled. They were standing in David’s kitchen, and the house was quiet, but the music had been blaring just minutes before. There were beer cans and bottles all over the floor. A few people were passed out here and there. The Stephanie-thing didn’t even want to know what she had missed.
Les was sitting on the couch, eating pizza nervously. The impostor wondered what Michael wanted with Owen. She hoped Michael didn’t want to kill him.
She wanted to do that herself.
“Get away from me,” she heard Les say from the living room.
A small gray-and-white tabby was rubbing itself against his leg.
* * *
Chris parked as far away from the other cars as he could; in case he needed to make a hasty exit, he had a nice, clear path onto University Drive. Sitting there in his Camaro on this cold, lonely night in the parking lot of Moby’s Diner reminded him of when he’d done the same thing four years ago.
His business venture he had embarked on with his old friend Shawn Haggerty had gone bust. The two of them had invested a lot of money into developing an independent production company for young filmmakers. All had been great, and then, for no apparent reason, Shawn had gotten greedy and wanted a higher stake in the shares and more power over their company.
It all snowballed from there: The filmmakers Chris had been trying to nurture had lost faith in their producers after witnessing so many disputes between them. Everything that happened after didn’t have to happen, either. Chris had chosen to punish himself for making such bad decisions—for trusting someone with his dream.
Yes, it had been his dream to start the company, but with Shawn’s enthusiasm for moviemaking being as strong as Chris’s, he had decided to take on a partner.
And so Chris had sat in this very parking lot not long after, having been forced to foreclose on his house, thinking about what to do with his life. He’d had no one to turn to. His parents had died in their sleep years before Chris had started the company. After all this time, he still blamed himself for his parents’ deaths, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He had almost died himself, but he had noticed the gas from the stove filling the house first…
After their deaths, he’d inherited the house
, which hadn’t been fully paid off. He had no family to take him in after.
Well, at least, not before the Unstoppable Titans. They were his family now, and he had to protect them the way he couldn’t protect his parents. He had to help Stephanie. The answer to the venom puzzle was inside the diner. Daniel could create a cure if he could just get a sample, right? Chris truly believed it was possible. He had to get that leech away from innocent bystanders and lure it to a place where the Titans could face it.
And after they got the sample, they could kill the creature.
He pulled out his cell phone and called the others.
“I’m going in,” Chris said.
“All right,” said Alyssa. “Be careful. Just scope it out and report back. I really wish we could meet up first.”
“I don’t want to risk it, just in case I’m being followed or something, but I promise I’ll just walk in to see if it’s in there. No confrontation.”
Chris hoped that would reassure Alyssa.
“Okay. Be safe, babe,” she said, sounding a little better.
Chris hung up and put the phone in his pocket (he would never leave it in his car again). He jumped out in one quick flourish and made his way quickly across the parking lot and into the restaurant.
It wasn’t too crowded tonight. Chris’s heart raced; he could see nearly all of the restaurant from where he stood, and any of the dozen people (mostly senior citizens) sitting at the tables, eating his or her meals, could be the shape-shifting creature.
Chris surveyed the non-smoking area on his left first since it was closer: There were two silver-haired couples, enjoying their assortment of fried foods and mashed potatoes. Neither of these couples noticed Chris staring at them.
It would probably be alone, he thought.
He surveyed the smoking area straight ahead now: There was a middle-aged couple with a toddler, having a heated discussion. The toddler, a little girl, was eating macaroni and cheese, her eyes moving from her mother to her father as if she were watching a tennis match.
Then there was an African-American girl sitting alone at a booth in the back; she wasn’t eating anything but had a glass of water in front of her. Some of her long dark hair was covering the left side of her face.
There was something familiar about the girl, but Chris couldn’t place it right away. Then, after a moment, he realized what it was: She was wearing the same pink shirt he had seen the fake Stephanie wearing earlier: Boys are Stoopid.
At that moment, the girl looked straight at him, a smile forming on her face.
On its face.
It was here, after all, and it had assumed a different identity. Chris made his way over to its table. He wasn’t quite sure how this creature was able to change its form, but he did know one of the people whose appearance it had assumed was dead, and another was in a coma. That didn’t bode well for the model of its current form.
Chris slid down into the booth, across from the girl, its eye never leaving his as he did so.
“Who are you supposed to be now?” Chris asked.
“Some girl I ran into on the way here,” it said.
“Where is she? Did you kill her?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Killing isn’t required to do this”—it waved at its face with one hand—“but sometimes I get carried away when I’m really hungry; I just can’t stop eating. You know what I mean?”
Chris shook his head and said, “No, I’m afraid I don’t.” He was vaguely aware he was grinding his teeth. “What do you want?”
“I want the one who did this to me,” it said as it lifted some hair from its face, revealing a damaged left eye. The socket was nothing but a dark, ugly wound. “I can never fix this, no matter who I change into.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Chris said, now grinning himself. “How about you let me put you out of your misery so you won’t have to worry about it anymore?”
“Not even if this poor girl’s life depended on it?” it asked, waving toward its face again. “She was alive when I left her.”
Chris straightened up. He was pretty sure this was a trick, and his policy on hostages (a controversial policy between him and Owen) was pretty strict, though this would be the first time he would get to enforce it.
“No deal,” he said.
The girl-thing narrowed its one good eye at him; it clearly hadn’t expected that response. Chris studied it for a moment. It didn’t look like anyone he recognized, and there was a good chance whoever it was impersonating was long dead.
“I thought it was your job to protect people,” the thing said, and then its face slowly morphed into that of Stephanie’s. “Isn’t that why you’ve killed so many of my kind?”
“We kill your kind because you’re monsters.”
“Really? How do you define ‘monster’?” it asked as it turned back into the unidentified girl.
Chris opened his mouth to respond, then shut it abruptly. He wasn’t sure what to say; he’d been completely blindsided. Here he was, talking to a shape-shifting vampire-thing, and now it was questioning him about his worldviews.
“Besides,” the impostor continued, “it’s not really me you need to worry about, but him.”
“Who?” Chris asked, but the impostor sealed its lips, frustrating him beyond belief. “What are you?”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” it said, leaning forward, “but I hope to find out very soon.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The impostor turned around to flag down a waitress, then turned back to Chris. “When I ran into your friend the other night, he said I was a vampire. I pretended not to know what a vampire was just to mess with him—I know everything Eric knew. But it got me thinking: I don’t know what I am. I’m like a vampire, but I know I’m not. I’m something else; I’ve seen my true form and it’s not pretty.
“The one I told you about earlier knows what I am, but he won’t tell me until he gets what he wants, and what he wants is Owen.”
The waitress came over and refilled its glass with water.
“What does he want with Owen?” Chris asked nervously.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good.”
“What makes you think we’ll agree to this?” Chris said incredulously. “It’s insane.”
“Because of her,” it replied, pointing to its face again. “She’s alive and waiting to be saved. It’s just a little exchange. Owen for the girl.”
“What did you do to Stephanie?”
It drank all the water in the glass, and then said, “I don’t know.”
“Is she going to die?”
“I don’t know,” the impostor repeated. “She’s the first one to get away from me. Well, her and you.”
With that, the creature left the restaurant. Chris remained seated with his thoughts.
* * *
Chris had told the other Titans about his meeting with the creature in the diner. Alyssa was dismayed at the news they’d been tricked. She immediately pulled out her cell phone and called David to see if he was okay. There was no answer, so she texted him.
She did not get an immediate response.
Setting the phone on her dresser, she changed out of her party clothes. She threw the stilettos across the room like they were garbage. A few minutes later, she saw her phone blinking, alerting her to a text message. She opened the phone and read the message: David’s dead. I ate his brains for dinner. LOL
CHAPTER 15
Chris parked in the lot across the alley where the impostor hid, according to the palm tracker he held in his hand. He had slipped a few capsules into the creature’s water, hoping it would drink them. (The capsules had been put in the glove compartment a long time ago, and then simply forgotten.) Alyssa pulled in next to Chris; Owen was with her. They got out and met at the front of the vehicles. All three of them wore matching black hoodies and blue jeans.
“We left Daniel at home,” said Alyssa. “He’s completely gone.”
> “Never let him drink again,” said Chris.
“Noted,” she said morosely. She was clearly dazed by David’s death.
“So, what’s the plan?” Owen asked.
“According to the tracker, it’s just standing in the alley somewhere, probably sleeping, or feeding on that girl, if she’s in there. Are we loaded?”
Owen and Alyssa lifted their hoodies to reveal a few pistols and Busters clipped to their belts. Owen also had his crossbow, which he pulled out of the SUV and draped over his shoulder.
“So I can take out its other eye, if I get the chance,” he said with a smirk.
Alyssa handed Chris a pistol of his own.
“Let’s go in,” Chris said. “And be careful. The shape-shifter told me about someone he’s working with. It might have been a lie, but keep your eyes open anyway.”
The three of them crossed the street, Chris in the lead with the tracker in front of him. The narrow alley was between two buildings—a bank and a boutique. There was a little stream of dirty water running down the center of the alley.
They all kept their eyes peeled, constantly looking around them. There was a dumpster up ahead on their left, and according to Chris, that’s where the signal came from.
The trio continued onward slowly.
* * *
Alyssa’s heart was racing. She still couldn’t believe David was dead. She couldn’t get the reply message out of her mind. Chris had advised her against going over to David’s house to check on him. It drove her crazy not knowing for sure. But there would be time for that later, she supposed.
That feeling of dread, the feeling she was going to die, overwhelmed her now. It threatened to overload her senses and paralyze her.
A cat ran by her foot, heading toward the direction in which the three of them had entered the alley. Alyssa stopped for a moment to watch it, turning her back on Owen and Chris. The cat looked familiar: It was a gray-and-white tabby. Just like Toby—David’s cat.
And then Alyssa noticed the collar around the cat’s neck. It was Toby.
What was he doing here?
She started to follow the cat without even realizing it. Suddenly it hit Alyssa: They were walking into a trap. David’s murderer was here.